I
began my Wonder Woman marathon around the New Year, and have
been savoring these Archives. Marston's writing is superb as
usual. His health was failing, and he brought in an assistant, Joye
Murchison to write a script he obviously had already plotted. Harry
G. Peter's artwork is a delight to the eyes, with his Gilded Age
influences making this title look like nothing else on the stands at
the time. The quality of both the writing and the artwork has been
remarkably consistent thus far, and remarkably high.

The
S & M, bondage, dominance and submission overtones are as rampant as
ever, and make me chuckle. The fact that this was scooped by children
as well as adults is comical. The adults undoubtedly got into the
kinkier aspects of it, while little girls found a strong female role
model that they could aspire to be. To put this in historical
perspective, these issues were published during World War II, and
Rosie the Riveter was fresh on people's minds. The woman's
suffragette movement was only 20 or so years old, so a rise in
feminism was beginning to take hold.

Wonder
Woman's trip to Venus provided some of the more outlandish,
surrealistic imagery in this book. H.G. Peter really shined here, as
he could draw very lovely ladies. While these stories can be somewhat
formulaic and repetitive, when taken in smaller “doses”, these
are remarkable reads. I have already begun reading Volume 6, and if I
savor it long enough, it should hold me over until Volume 7 is
released in October of this year.

The
OCD zone- The linework and color restoration are much improved
over Volume 5, with the integrity of the artwork better preserved.
Volume 5 had much of the linework washed out by shoddy computer
recoloring, rather than doing it by “hand” on computer, which was
likely the case here.

The
paper is a dull matte finish coated stock, and is absolutely
wonderful. This has sewn binding and lays pretty flat overall. DC
Archives are great.

DC
has made strides in fixing the problem of their books not laying
flat. Join the cause page if you want make sure that DC keeps up the
recent good work on their hardcovers. This group is a watchdog
organization dedicated to top notch production values in collected
editions.